


BA + IW 4eva

by mosylu



Category: The Flash (TV 2014)
Genre: Alternate Universe - High School, Anthology, Christmas Presents, F/M, Fluff, Futurefic, Pastfic, Tumblr Prompts, although Barry is right about beer, incredibly unwise decisons
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2015-12-11
Updated: 2016-12-21
Packaged: 2018-05-06 02:50:36
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 15
Words: 6,988
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5400086
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/mosylu/pseuds/mosylu
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>I needed a place for my Westallen fluff, so here it is! Will be intermittently added to as I write along</p><p>Latest Story: Adventures in Babysitting - for the prompt "don't you dare leave me, not now"</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Sugar Crash

**Author's Note:**

> For the prompt: “You fainted…straight into my arms. You know, if you wanted my attention you didn’t have to go to such extremes.”

“Barry? Barry!”

“Urghble,” he said, and blinked his eyes open.

Iris’s face hovered over his. “Are you with me?”

“Yyyyeahh? Wha'happened?”

“You fainted straight into my arms,” Iris said. “I’m taking you to the hospital.”

“Nooooo!” he wailed. If she took him to the hospital, that would eat up the entire afternoon he’d carved out to hang around with her, something he’d missed in his suddenly dramatic secret superhero life.

“Barry! You were in a coma three weeks ago and you just passed out. Can you blame me for being concerned?”

He managed to sit up, and told himself his head wasn’t spinning. “I just, I didn’t eat for a long time. That’s all. Low blood sugar. If I get something in my stomach I’ll be fine.”

Her eyes narrowed. “Like, how long since you ate?”

Okay, how long was reasonable for someone who didn’t burn calories in the tens of thousands every time he ran? “Ummmm, like, a day?”

“Barry!” She didn’t look suspicious. Excellent. Just concerned. He hated making her concerned. (Sort of hated it. Sort of loved it.)

“I was busy! Coming back to life is busy!” He dug around in his pocket and came up with half a prototype energy bar that Cisco had made. “This will help for right now.”

Iris wrinkled her nose at it. “If you say so, but that looks awful. I have some leftover pizza in the fridge, do you think that’ll be enough to fill your stomach?”

About four giant supreme pizzas would probably do it, Barry thought, but nodded. “Sure. Yeah.”

He started to get up, but she pushed him back onto the couch with the tip of her finger. “Excuse me, mister, but no. I’ll get it.”

When she left, he stuffed the energy bar into his mouth and swallowed it nearly whole. On top of the whole blood sugar thing (his hands were still shaking), he didn’t want to have it on his tongue for any longer than necessary because Cisco may have mastered the nutritional science but not the flavor profile.

The muted beeps of the microwave told him she’d put the pizza in to heat up. Iris came back in with a glass of orange juice and handed it to him. He drank it in a couple of gulps to rinse out his mouth.

“Better?”

He nodded. “Thanks. Sorry about that. I know you were into the movie.”

“Well, I was, but - ” Her eyes crinkled up in his favorite way. “But you know, if you wanted my attention, you didn’t have to go to such extremes.”

He threw a pillow at her.


	2. The Play's the Thing

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> For the prompt: “I’ve seen the way you look at me when you think I don’t notice.”

“I’ve seen the way you look at me when you think I don’t notice,” Barry said.

She lowered her lashes and peeked at him through them. “And just how do I look at you?”

“Like you want to eat me up with a spoon.”

“Why, sir, I don’t know what you’re talking about.”

He looked at his script for the next line and shook his head. “Iris. This sounds like porn. This sounds straight up pornographic. Like you’re about to start unbuttoning your shirt.”

She swatted him with her scarf. “Barrrrry! Take this seriously.”

“Why?”

“Because it’s important to our friend. Because it’s part of his grade for drama class.”

“Why did Cisco take drama class, anyway? He’s already been accepted to MIT.”

“I don’t know, maybe he thought it would be an easy A for senior year?” She checked her script and shook her head. This was not A material. Barry had a point. It might be XXX material. “I think you’re right - this needs editing.”

“Hang on, I didn’t say that.”

“You said it was pornographic.”

“And? I get to do a sexy scene with my hot girlfriend.” He pulled her down on his lap.

She snuggled into him, looping her arms around his neck. In this position, their eyes were perfectly even. He was so, so tall. She’d never thought she would date a tall boy - _so_ hard on the neck! - until the day she’d looked across the aisle in English class and saw him shyly looking away.

He wasn’t shy anymore. He beamed at her and squeezed her hip. “I have to thank Cisco for writing this scene.”

She smirked. “Are you sure you didn’t help him?”

“Nooooo,” he vowed, but his eyes twinkled.

She primmed up her mouth to hide her smile. “Mhm. I see why you wanted to practice today.”

“Do you have an objection, Miss West?”

“I do not, Mr. Allen.”

The script fell to the floor and was forgotten.


	3. Waterfall

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> For the prompt “So, I found this waterfall…” from sophisticatedloserchick on Tumblr

Barry’s voice was really far too casual. “So, I found this waterfall … ”

Iris shifted the phone from one ear to the other. “So help me, Bartholomew Allen, if the next words out of your mouth aren’t ‘do you know where your bikini is,’ you’ll be down one wife.”

Silence.

“I do know where my bikini is,” she said hopefully.

“Um,” he said. “Okay. Well. That’s - you know I always like to hear that.”

She folded over and let her forehead rest on her keyboard. On the screen, a continuous stream of lkuhrguihjiklkjdfoygtyuiiwuherhikhkjn;lkjkighhfsdnskj spread across the document - a pretty fair expression of what she really wanted to say. “What’d they do?” she sighed instead.

“Far as I can tell, Dawn flushed all her brother’s GI Joes down the upstairs toilet.”

“Oh my god.”

“In case you’re interested, it seems to have been a revenge killing because he flushed her GoldieBlox first.”

“Oh my godddddddddddddd.”

“I got it cleaned up! But.”

“Waterfall,” she said

“There’s going to have to be some plumbing work, for sure.”

“Remind me that our children are beautiful and adorable.”

“They are beautiful and adorable, also brilliant, and genuinely helpful.”

“Helpful?”

“Well, they helped me mop up. And said sorry a lot.”

“That might keep them alive.”

“Beautiful. Adorable,” he reminded her.

“Evolutionary advantage to save them from filicide,” she said.

“Very possibly. They’re grounded, and they know it.”

She sighed.

“Look,” he said. “Since you know where your bikini is anyway - ”

“I thought you said it was all cleaned up?”

“I did! Since they’re grounded, and reasonably repentant, I’m thinking maybe we hand them over to Wally and find an actual waterfall this weekend.”

“I love you very, very much,” she said feelingly.

“Just remember that when you see the upstairs bathroom.”


	4. Happy New Year

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Prompt for: “If you keep looking at me like that we won’t make it to a bed.”

The drama was done with, the day (the night) was saved. By all accounts, it was a good night.

But it was three hours into 2021 and Iris West-Allen still had not gotten a kiss for the new year.

“Sorry,” Barry said to her.

“It’s fine,” she said, hopping up to sit on the workstation.

“It’s fine or it’s - ” Deep, dramatic sigh. “ _Fiiiiiine._ ”

“Barry,” she said. “I mean it. It’s okay.”

“But we had to sneak out of the party.”

“I was there with the hottest guy in the room.” She looked him up and down. “I think they all drew their own conclusions.”

“As long as none of them concluded that I was going to change into a leather outfit and go out to save hundreds of people.”

“Not unless they have a very different idea of our sex life than I’ve led them to believe.”

Under the cowl, he went almost as red as his suit. He cleared his throat. “Anyway! You look gorgeous.”

She swung her leg a few times, setting the slinky, glittering skirts swaying. It was the fanciest gown she’d ever owned, purchased just for the gala at the Central City Museum of Art. She did look gorgeous. She honest to god did. “Thank you, honey.”

He came close enough to catch her hands in his. “I can change back into my tux. Maybe the party’s still going on?”

She checked the clock. “Doubtful. Anyway, I’m not in a party mood anymore.”

“No?”

She touched her tongue to her top lip. “Nope.”

He dropped one hand and ran his finger up her thigh. “What kind of mood are you in?”

“You’re in a skin tight leather suit and I just helped you save a riverboat party that never knew it was about to get blown to kingdom come. What kind of mood do you think I’m in?”

He grinned wolfishly. “If you keep looking at me like that we won’t make it to a bed.”

She tipped her head back. “You can get me back to our place, out of this dress, and into bed in about thirty seconds.”

He leaned down and breathed into her ear, _“Still too long.”_


	5. The Naughty List

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> For the prompt: "You're the only one I trust to do this."

Iris wrapped her legs around the branch and gulped. Maybe this hadn’t been her best idea ever.

She shook the branch above her head so it scratched against Barry’s bedroom window again.

His face appeared, slack with shock. The sash flew up. “Iris?! What are you doing?”

“Shhhhhh!” she hissed. “Dad’s home.”

“Uh-huh,” he said slowly. “And this is your house. But you’re in a tree, trying to climb in my window, and you’re going to break your neck before you ever get your driver’s license.”

She scowled. He’d been holding that driver’s license thing over her head for the past month, ever since his sixteenth birthday and his successful acquisition of said license. She wouldn’t be able to get it until February. Dammit.

“I’m not trying to climb in your window, I just want to give you something.” She risked life and limb by letting go of the branch and holding out the plastic grocery bag, with a brightly wrapped present inside.

“What is it?”

“Daddy’s gift. You need to hide it for me.”

The hiding of presents was a firm tradition in the West household. If you found your present, you were well within your rights to open long before Christmas. If the person who’d given it to you was annoyed, well, they should have hidden it better.

“Why me?” he asked, sliding one long arm out into the cold to grab it and pull it to safety.

“You’re the only one I trust to do this!” she cried. The branch swayed and she grabbed it with both hands. “He’ll never find it in your room.”

“Is that a crack about the mess? Because I’ll have you know I can - ” He looked over his shoulder. “See almost a full square inch of the floor. Where am I supposed to put it?”

“Somewhere he can’t find it,” she said, starting to scoot backward on the branch. “But don’t tell me. I don’t want to know.”

“What’s he going to do, break out the thumbscrews?” He leaned out the window. “Where are you going? Aren’t you going to climb inside where it’s warm? And there’s a solid floor?”

“No,” she said, wrapping her arms around the lovely solidity of the trunk. “I’m going to climb back down this tree and walk in the front door like the totally innocent person that - ”

“You completely are not,” Barry finished. He kept watch until she dropped into the snow at the foot of the tree, then shut his window and presumably went to hide the present.

Iris smacked some twigs and bark off her mittens and the knees of her thick leggings, then sauntered up the steps, opened the front door, and yelled out, “I’m hooooooome!”

Her dad looked at her over his paper.

She grinned at him.

He shook his head and returned his attention to the news. “You are a bad, bad girl,” he said quietly. “I'mma put coal in your stocking.”

She plopped down on the sofa and whispered, “His very own gift, right under his nose for the entire month of December? He’ll never find it.”

“Do me a favor, baby,” her dad said. “Never take up a life of crime.”

“Afraid you’ll have to arrest me?”

“Afraid you’ll be too good at it.”


	6. Pickles, Skunk Feet, and Traitorous Floors

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> For the Tumblr prompt: "things you said when you were drunk"

When Barry found five-sixths of a sixpack sitting next to their neighbor’s trash cans one Saturday morning, Iris suggested they try it.

(In retrospect, it’s not their _smartest_ decision ever. But in the pantheon of dumb teenager decisions, getting drunk for the first time in the safety of their own home, with no possibility of driving, no risk of roofies, no cell phones filming, and most importantly on a day when Joe was pulling a double shift, isn’t the actual worst way they could have done it.)

“Ughhh,” Barry said after his first swig. “This is gross. Beer is gross.”

Iris wrinkled her nose, but took another gulp. “Maybe you have to get used to it. Like pickles.”

“This is not pickles,” Barry said, but drank some more just in case she was right.

Halfway through the first can, he started to feel warm and fuzzy. “Hey, you’re right. It’s okay now.”

“Yyyyep,” she said. Was that slurring? No, didn’t something have to have an S in it to slur? He wasn’t sure. “But it still tastes like a skunk stepped in it.”

“Yeeeahhh,” he drawled. “But I don’t really care that much now.”

“Anyway, skunk feet are cute.”

“Seriously?”

”They’re so littttttttttle,” she cooed, “and they have these teensy claws - “

“And they’re walking through the forest, right, with, like poop and dead leaves and bugs and - I don’t care how cute they are, they’re gross.”

“Euwwwwww,” Iris said.

Another half a can, and she asked, “Okay, but whyyyyyy do people drink this? Like … as a drink?”

Barry gave that careful consideration. “Because it’s … nice? After you’ve drunk it?”

She considered. “Maybe.”

Almost to the end of their second can (they were careful and democratic about splitting it; two cans each and they would pour the last can into two glasses), Iris started to fan herself. To Barry’s ~~horror~~ ~~delight~~ horror, she peeled off the grey CCPD shirt she’d carefully cut up and re-sewn to make an upcycled peekaboo midriff top (or something? He’d just figured out how to put the sewing machine together; he didn’t know fashion words).

Luckily, it was so incredibly fashionable that it required a tank top underneath for decency, or at least Joe required it.

“Iris,” he croaked.

“I’m hoottttt,” she whined.

Yes. True.

“It must be the A/C,” Barry declared. He was feeling a little sticky and sweaty himself. “It must not be working.”

“Oh my god, Daddy is suuuuuch a cheapo. I bet he put it on, like, eighty before he left.” She got up and went toward the thermostat, walking awfully carefully now that he thought about it. Like. Soooo carefully.

He stared at her ass. Thought, _Stop staring at her ass_. Kept staring at her ass.

“It must be broken,” she said, leaning into the wall to peer at the readout from close up. “I can’t read it. Bare, come here and look. Can you fix this?”

He got up, and the floor tried to slide out from under his feet. Stupid floor. Not cool, floor.

He stomped heavily across the floor - take that! - and squinted at the little grey square. The numbers squiggled and jumped like their own little mathematical mosh pit. “It’s totally broken, I can’t read it either.”

“Hmmm,” Iris said, and her general bodily geometry started to change. Her ninety-degree angle, relative to the floor, slowly shifted more toward eighty, then seventy-five, and then -

Belatedly, he grabbed her.

She beamed at him. “You caught me.” Under his hands, the skin of her back and her sides was so warm and so, so soft, right through the tank top.

“I’ll always catch you,” he said, staring down into her eyes. “Always.”

The floor, which had clearly been biding its time, chose that moment to strike, sliding slowly away so that Barry said, “Um, not sure who’s gonna catch me though - ”

“Mmmm?”

They both went down in a heap of beer breath and giggles.

Of course, this was about the time Joe came home early.

The yelling went on for an hour _(“what kind of damn fool thing are you thinking I’m a COP this is ILLEGAL if you weren’t my kids I’d have to arrest you I might do it anyway”_ ), and when first Iris, and then Barry started throw up, all he did was grab the two nearest trash cans, plop one on each of their laps, and carry on hollering.

Later on, as they both scrubbed out the trash cans in queasy, dizzy misery, Iris moaned, “I’m never getting drunk again.”

“Me neither,” Barry groaned.


	7. Just What She Needed

“Okay,” Barry said, setting her on her feet. “You can open your eyes.”

Iris blinked her eyes open and gasped. They stood in a sun-washed hotel room, the filmy curtains at the French doors still fluttering madly in the breeze of Barry’s entrance with her in his arms. Just outside, a vividly yellow beach met obscenely blue water. A bed the size of a lake, piled with enough pillows to build twelve pillow forts, stood at the center of the room.

“Where are we?”

“Coast City. I called in a favor and set up a weekend getaway for my wife, the Pulitzer-prize-winning journalist - ”

“Just nominated,” she said, trying to calculate how many steps she would need to take to face-plant onto the bed.

“You’ll win,” he said with that unfailing faith in her. “If not this year, then next year. C'mere.” He caught her around the waist.

A split second later, she bounced once or twice and sank into the deep cloud of a mattress. “Mmmm,” she said, flopping back and staring at the ceiling. “Oh my god. This is amazing.”

He stretched out next to her. “You deserve this. You’re amazing. You’ve been working your butt off on that that expose on the dirty senator.”

“I really, really wanted to get it done by this weekend. But I was starting to forget what you looked like.”

He leaned over and pressed a kiss to her lips. “Take a good look.”

She framed his face with her hands and smiled up at him. “Damn, you’re cute.”

He grinned. “Yeah, I really am, aren’t I?”

She giggled and shoved him. He laughed and flopped onto his back.

“How long are we here?” she asked.

“Until Monday morning. Or Sunday night. Your call on whether you want to go home and see the kids or just go right to work.”

“Mmmm. Sunday night. I miss their faces, too. Who’s looking after them?”

“Joe and Wally.”

“Excellent.” She rolled her eyes. “I can’t even believe Wally had the nerve to say there were just two of them and how much more work could two be than one.”

“He hasn’t babysat since they learned to walk. He’ll eat his words.”

“Muahahahaha,” she said sleepily, and rolled onto her stomach, nuzzling the pillow. “I will live here,” she proclaimed, muffled. “This is my home now. Check my breathing with a mirror every half hour, okay?”

He kissed the back of her neck. “Hotel staff have strict instructions not to disturb us for at least six hours.” He started to scoot off the bed.

She stuck her hand out and grabbed his shirt. “Heyyyyyy mister. Where do you think you’re going?”

“Gonna let you sleep.”

“You’re gonna make me sleep without my husband?”

“You’re so tired you could sleep on a bed of nails. You told me that last night.”

“As long as you’re with me.” She tugged his shirt and he rolled back, snuggling her close. She settled herself into that perfect little notch in his shoulder that seemed to have been designed for her head. “Love you,” she mumbled, eyes already closed. “Happy anniversary.”

“Happy anniversary.”


	8. Official

Joe delegated them, by means of text, to go and get some groceries. Somehow, Barry had interpreted that to mean, “Eat all the leftovers in the fridge so there’s plenty of room for new food!” and Iris had gone along with it because there was strawberry shortcake in there, and honestly, that wasn’t gonna eat itself.

He was spread out on the couch, eating a slice of cold pizza with his legs slung over her lap. She’d balanced her plate of sweet dessert on his knees. She kicked one of the emptied styrofoam containers on the coffee table and frowned. “Did you finish off my stuffed pork chop from the other night at Le Monde?”

“Nnnnnn-may-yes?” he said with a mouthful of cheese and pepperoni.

She narrowed her eyes. “You’re lucky you’re cute.”

He grinned at her.

“We should go back there for our anniversary,” she said.

“Oo, good idea.” He frowned. “When is that? And … which anniversary exactly?”

She opened her mouth, then frowned, too. “Hang on. I know this.”

“Well, I don’t.” He looked troubled.

“I - Do neither of us actually know our own anniversary?” Iris asked him. “That’s not possible. We’ve been dating for - “

“How long, exactly?” Barry asked. "Cuz I really don’t know.”

This was the big question. They looked at each other.

“A couple of months at least,“ Iris said, licking whipped cream off her thumb. "Definitely?”

“As of when? That’s what I’m trying to figure out. Because I’ve missed at least one anniversary, so.”

“One month,“ she said. "Two, max.”

“Right! Possibly two chances that I’ve missed to send a life sized teddy bear to your apartment.“

"What would I do with a life-size teddy bear?”

“Make it your guest bed? I don’t know.”

Ugh. He was ridiculous. She adored it. “You’ll have plenty of chances,” she told him. “We’re going to have _lots_ of anniversaries.” That was indisputable, a fact carved in stone.

“Right, but we’ve got to figure out which day first.“

“Hmmm.” She tapped her fork against her plate, and squirted more whipped cream on top of her strawberry shortcake. The can sputtered and coughed. She shook it hard and squirted again, little bits of white spraying all over her plate and Barry’s jeans. “Oops, sorry, honey. Did we have a first date?”

“Like, where we called it a date?” Barry’s brow scrunched. “I don’t know. We do all the usual stuff we’ve always done. Just with more kissing and saying I love you.”

Triumph flashed in her chest. “First kiss!”

“Lost timelines,” he said. “Alternate universes. And adrenaline smooching after big dramatic moments. I like it, but I don’t know if we can count kissing for this.”

“Well, how about the first time we - you know?”

“Well, that wasn’t so much a date as you ripping off my suit and, you know.”

“By the way, you still haven’t told Cisco about that, have you?”

His eyes widened. “I would never roll on you that way, baby. Cisco adores you, but that might be a bridge too far.” He returned to the question at hand. “The first I love you? No, that doesn’t work,“ he answered himself.

Iris nodded firmly. That had been when she was with Eddie. It manifestly did not count as her and Barry's anniversary.

"The first time you said it?” he suggested.

“I think we have to categorize that with adrenaline makeouts,” she said with a shiver. That had been a rough day, and seeing Barry come back to her, exhausted, lightning scorched, but alive, had caused a lot of things to burst the dam she’d built. But there had been some hazy amount of time after that where they still circled around each other and the idea of being an Official Couple, Barry-and-Iris, Westallen.

Everything was so _fuzzy_ with them, the boundaries between dearest friend and lover so porous. They’d always been that way. As if they’d been slowly getting together for decades, like tectonic plates crashing together. She couldn’t point to a single, specific moment or event that -

“Wait,” she said, and flailed around. She couldn’t quite reach, and ordered him, “Get my phone.”

He stretched out one long arm and nabbed it off the coffee table, handing it over.

She tapped a few buttons, then turned it to show him. “There.”

“June 24th,” he read off the screen. “In a relationship with Barry Allen.”

“Uh-huh. Facebook official.” She pointed at it. “See? Right there. That’s our anniversary.”

“Sweet,” he said, satisfied. “Wait, what’s today?”

“Uh … oh!” She blinked at him. “August 24th.”

“Aw, man! I don’t even know where to start to get a life-size teddy bear.”

“Let’s do the restaurant instead,” she said firmly. “I’ll make a few calls, see if I can swing a reservation. We may have to go tomorrow.” She grabbed the pizza box off his lap and tossed it on the coffee table, then set her empty plate next to it. “But you know what we can do today?”

“What’s that?”

“Go grocery shopping.”

“Really? For our first recognized anniversary, you want to go grocery shopping?”

She held up the can. “Well, we’re out of whipped cream.”


	9. Waking Up in Vegas

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> For the tumblr prompt: “Don’t panic but I think we might have accidentally gotten married…” from youareiron_andyouarestrong

The piercing desert sunlight stabbed through the tiny crack in her eyelids, directly into her throbbing head. Iris groaned into the pillow. “Oh, god. What did we do last night?”

“Iris,” Barry said in her ear.

She rolled over and saw the extremely serious look on his face. “Oh, my god, Bear! What happened?”

Barry held up one hand, with a gold ring around the fourth finger. In the other, he held up an official-looking document. “Don’t panic, but I think we might have accidentally gotten married last night.”

She stared at both for awhile, then broke out into helpless laughter. “Barry, you idiot. We’ve been married for fifteen years.” This trip to Las Vegas was their anniversary present to each other. Away from the kids.

He studied the certificate. “Hmmm, well, that explains the date on this.”

Still hooting, she whacked him with a pillow. “No seriously, what did we do?”

He hopped up, hangover free. Man, she was never going to forgive him for that. “Well, it’s a lot to get into,” he called over his shoulder, going into the other room, “but I think if you watch the security videos from all the casinos - “

“You’re kidding about that, right?” she yelled after him. “Right? Honey?”


	10. Had a Bad Day

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> for the tumblr prompt: "“I’m going for a swim. Do you wanna join me?” Cause its summertime and we all know they would do this ;)" from sophisticatedloserchick

Iris pulled into the garage and rested her head on the steering wheel. It was the devil’s armpit of summer, the A/C in her car was going in and out, she was hot and sticky, she’d worked overtime chasing a lead that had fizzled to nothing, and she was pretty sure her period was coming. 

Also, it had been her day to pick up the kids and make dinner. Three hours ago. Worst. Mommy. Ever.

Some days it just wasn’t worth getting out of bed.

She hauled herself out of the driver’s seat, slammed the door vengefully, and remembered her bag was still in there, with her laptop in it. She considered leaving it, but in the end, she opened the door and grabbed it, hoping she wouldn’t give in to temptation and smash it with a hammer tonight.

“Mamaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaa!” two voices yelled when she opened the door, and two small bodies slammed into her knees. She bent down to give and receive kisses, feeling some of the tension seep out of her body. 

“Daddyyyyyyyyyyyyy, Mama’s home!” Dawn shrieked. Iris looked up to see her husband leaning on the kitchen island, watching them.

“Babe,” she gasped. “I’m so, so, so sorry. There was this lead, and it didn’t work out, and you had to go get the kids, and I’m so sorry -” She felt her eyes sting with tears.

“Hey,” he said, coming around the island and leaning over the kids’ heads to press a kiss to her lips. “It’s okay. It happens. I got your text, I got the kids, and I made dinner - “

“Grey Gramma’s recipe, Mama!” DJ yelled at ear-splitting volume.

“The macaroni and cheese?” Now the tears were for a different reason. Next to brownies, her Grandma Esther’s mac and cheese recipe was her all-time favorite comfort food.

“You bet. And if you want, later we can make B-R-O-W-N-I-E-S.“

“I don’t deserve you,” she said.

“You deserve everything good.”

She stroked his cheek. “You’re everything good.” She noticed something. “Why are the kids in their swimsuits?” She took in her husband. “Why are you in your swimsuit?”

“Well, it’s so sticky and gross today, I pulled out the pool.” He pointed out the window, where the blow-up kiddie pool had the hose snaked into it, running water. “We’re going for a swim while we wait for the mac and cheese to finish up. Do you want to join us?”

She dropped her laptop bag with a thud. “That sounds like the best offer I’ve had all day.”


	11. The Real Question

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> for the tumblr prompt: "Before you decide to murder me, let me explain"

When Joe walked into his house, it was bitter cold. Since all the windows were open, and it was mid-January, this was no great surprise. The real question was why.

He decided it was time to interview the probable culprits. 

“Iris! Barry!”

Barry came galumphing down the stairs. The waft of cold air that followed him told Joe that the upstairs windows were all open, too. “Joe! Hi!”

Iris skidded around the corner from the kitchen. “Dad! Hey! You’re home!”

He narrowed his eyes at the two of them, standing flush-faced and guilty-looking as hell. Now the real question was, what were they guilty of?

“Dad, before you decide to murder us, let me explain.”

“Why don’t you do that?”

“We were doing our chores, from the chore list, that you left us, like you asked. And we decided that we should try adjusting a … recipe.”

“A recipe. For chicken fingers?” That was what he’d written down for dinner. 

“Yes!”

“It’s on the box.” Turn on oven, put in chicken, remove when finished. 

“Well. Certain … tweaks. That didn’t work out quite as planned. So there was a … smell.”

“So you opened the windows,” Joe said. “All the windows.”

“Right!” Iris said.

Getting the whole truth out of his daughter might take awhile. She had a facility with words that either meant lawyering or con artistry was in her future. He looked at Barry. 

“Well, the good news is, we figured out how to put out an oven fire,” Barry said brightly.

Iris hissed at him.

Joe wondered if he’d be allowed to bring two teenagers to the station and handcuff them to his desk.


	12. Bet Contest

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> For the tumblr prompt: “I bet I can make you scream my name.”

“I bet I can make you snort milk out your nose,” Iris whispered.

“Bet you can’t,” Barry whispered back. They had to whisper because they weren’t exactly supposed to be eating their lunch anywhere in the school library, especially not in the encyclopedia section. But the location was perfect for a) cheering Barry up and b) avoiding Becky Cooper, may she burn in the fires of a thousand stuck tanning beds.

Iris waited until he’d taken a swallow of milk and said, “What’s brown and sticky?”

He shrugged. 

“A stick!”

He spluttered. “That’s so bad! It’s so, so bad! Oh my god. Gimme a napkin. Gross.”

She clapped her hands and laughed. “You did! You did snort milk out your nose.”

A voice came from beyond the shelves. “Shhhhhhh!”

They both hunched down behind the encyclopedias. “Okay, fine,” he whispered back. “Um. I bet I can make you scream my name.”

“You cannot.” 

“Can.“

“I‘d like to see you try.”

“Okay, you will.”

He was sneaky. He waited until they’d finished lunch, and she’d gotten up, with their lunch trash gathered up on her tray.

His hand darted forward, aimed straight at the ticklish spot sort of midway between the small of her back and her waist. She let out a shriek - “Augh, BarryBarryBarry stoppit!” and all their garbage went flying.

The same voice that had shushed them said, “Mr. Allen! Miss West! _That’s enough_!”

* * *

“… and that’s how we got banned from the school library for the rest of junior year,” Iris finished.


	13. Project Date Night

Joe West had never signed up for this. Raise Barry? Sure. Teach him right from wrong? Absolutely. Support him as he became a superhero? Bring it on.

Play Tim Gunn while Barry ran back and forth trying to get the absolute perfect outfit for his first date with Iris?

That was a bridge too far.

“Is this too casual? This is too casual.” _Whoosh,_ and then _whoosh_ again as he returned in  a new outfit. “What do you think? Oh my god. What am _I_ thinking? This is way worse.” _Whoosh-whoosh._ “Okay, okay, sport coat and jeans? Yeah. No.” _Whoosh-whoosh._

“That’s a tuxedo,” Joe pointed out.

“Well … yeah … maybe a _little_ too much?“

“Son, don’t you dare come down here until you’ve made your final selection or I _will_ test out how you stack up next to a speeding bullet.”

_Whoosh._

His phone rang. Maybe it was work. Maybe there had been a murder. A murder-suicide. A murder-suicide by drowning in a fish tank. He grabbed it.

“Dad,” Iris wailed. “This is an _emergency_!”

“Baby?”

“I can’t find my necklace!”

“Your necklace?” She had a lot of necklaces, his kid. Always had, ever since she’d spent every penny of her first month’s allowance at Claire’s. She was going to have to narrow that down some.

“I need you to go upstairs and check my old room. All the baseboards, inside the closet, maybe under the mattress - Oh! I found it. Never mind. Okay. Crisis averted. Wow, this isn't right at all.” She hung up.

He blinked at his phone, then slowly put it away.

Barry whooshed in and said, “Was that Iris? What is she wearing? I want to coordinate.”

“No idea,” he said. “You look fine in that shirt.”

“What, this? No,” Barry said. “What? No way. Wait. I’ll be back.”

“Don’t you - “ 

_Whoosh._

His phone rang again. “Dad, did I leave my blue dress over there?”

“I don’t know, you packed everything when you moved out.”

“No, actually, I bought it after I moved out, but I thought maybe I might have brought it over for some reason and left it - “

“Why would you do that, baby?”

“Well, I don’t know! But it’s perfect, and I need it, and I can’t find it - ” 

“Don’t you have that spare closet?”

“Well, fine, I’ll check, but that’s the closet with my winter clothes, Dad, and that's definitely a summer dress, so why would - “ She gasped.

“Found it?”

“Yes!” she squealed.

“Still perfect?”

“Yesss, I love you so much Daddy bye!”

He rubbed his ear. His eardrum felt tender.

Barry whooshed in again, still in the same shirt from before. Maybe he’d settled on that? Or was that too much to hope for?

“Was that Iris? Did she tell you what she was wearing this time?”

“Blue,” Joe said firmly, seeing no other option. “You wanna coordinate, she’s wearing blue.”

“Blue,” Barry echoed, and whooshed away again.

Joe wilted with relief. 

“What _shade_ of blue?” Barry yelled down the stairs, just as his phone rang again.

Joe looked at the ceiling. Or, perhaps, heaven. “SweartaGod,” he mumbled. “SweartaGod I’m going to shoot them both.”


	14. May I Have this Dance?

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I waffled over whether to put this in here, but it is tangentially Westallen and it is a tumblr prompt, soooooo . . . 
> 
> For the prompt "may I have this dance please?"

Joe found Iris at the chocolate fountain, trying to eat a strawberry she’d just dipped without dripping chocolate on her giant, floofy, princess dress. Barry was laughing, holding a napkin under her chin, and she laughed back. When she managed to chomp the fruit, they both cheered, hands in the air.

Joe laughed. “Ain’t nobody keeping you away from your chocolate.”

They looked around and grinned at him, and Iris said, “Believe it.”

The music started, and Joe held out his hand. “May I have this dance?”

She blinked and wiped a little chocolate away from the corner of her mouth. “Sure.” She went up on her toes to kiss Barry on the lips, and he said, “Mmm, chocolate,” and kissed her back before letting her go.

They’d had their father-daughter dance, which had been the longest three minutes of his life as far as Joe was concerned, everybody looking at them. He’d been a cop too long to enjoy everybody looking at him or the people he loved, even when he knew it was all goodwill. Iris had squeezed his shoulder at the end of that, a silent thank-you because she knew he’d done it for her.

In the mess of dancers, he felt far more comfortable, and he found himself blinking away tears every time she smiled up at him.

“Awww, Daddy,” she said. “You crying?”

“Hell, yeah, I’m crying,” he said. “It’s my baby’s wedding day.”

She laid her head on his chest, heavier than it had been the first time she’d done so, twenty-seven years ago. He rested his chin on top of her head.

This wasn’t the end of anything, he knew that. She was still his daughter. They’d still turn up on Thursday nights for dinner. She’d still call him “Daddy,” she’d still text him every time she heard about an officer-involved shooting through work. Barry would still speed-deliver sandwiches or soup that she’d made when she knew he had to work late.

But she was someone’s wife now. She was _Barry’s_ wife now.

And even that wasn’t so different, was it? They’d always belonged to each other, his two kids, in a way that nobody could quite define. But it was defined now, solemnized by signatures on a marriage license, by the gold rings on their fingers, by the hyphenate last name that would turn up on Iris’s next byline.

He pressed a kiss to her hair, managing to avoid getting poked in the eye by her tiara. “You happy, baby?”

She beamed up at him. Her eyes were damp, but the waterproof mascara held. “I’m the happiest I’ve ever been.”

He touched another kiss to her forehead. “May this only be the first time you say that.” 


	15. Adventures in Babysitting

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> for the Tumblr prompt "don't you dare leave me, not now"

Barry rushed down the stairs, his overloaded backpack thudding against his spine, hoping that Joe hadn’t taken the car out to dinner with his cousin and her family. 

He was halfway out the front door when a hand clamped around his elbow and yanked him to a halt. “Don’t you dare leave me, not now.”

“Iris,” he said helplessly, craning his neck to check the driveway. Yes! The car was there. “The library’s going to close and the books I used for my paper were due last Wednesday and - ”

“I will pay your overdue fees, now get back in here!” She yanked, he tottered backward, and she slammed the front door.

“What’s going on?”

“What’s going on is _that.”_ Iris cracked the door to the basement and pointed downward, like she was indicating the pits of hell. Shrieks like the souls of the damned drifted up the stairs.

Barry turned wide eyes on Iris. “No.”

“Yes,” she said grimly.

“Why are both sets of your cousin’s twins in the basement? I thought they were all going out to dinner.” And they would all have lovely peace and quiet around here, he didn’t say. It had been a very long week that Cousin Isabel and her husband and their kids had been spending in Central City.

“Because my generous father - ” She said it like she would say _scum of the earth_ “- told them I would babysit so they could have a nice adult dinner out.“

“Wow. That’s - that - did you make him mad or something?”

“I think it has something to do with Evan and last night when I missed my curfew by half an hour.”

Ever since she’d started dating the school lacrosse star, she was never around, and when she was, Evan was attached to her lips. Either that or smirking at Barry because his forearm was about the size of Barry’s thigh and he hadn’t had acne since a single pimple in eighth grade and he was dating Iris West, the love of Barry’s life, ha, ha, ha, sit there and suffer, you scrawny peasant.

… which might be something of an unfair projection, but Barry was standing by it anyway, so there.

“Barry,” she said. “They’re going to Meroni’s. You know how long they’ll be? Forever. They left bedtimes. They plan to be out _past bedtime,_ Bare!”

He patted her shoulder. “You’ll be fine.”

“Absolutely I will, because you’re gonna help me.”

“What? Why?”

“Because leaving one teenage girl to deal with the quadruple spawn of Satan himself is cruel and unusual punishment and you don’t want me to be cruelly and unusually punished, right?”

“Um,” Barry said, because “quadruple spawn of Satan himself” wasn’t actually that overblown of a description. On the other hand, Iris was looking up at him with big, melting brown eyes.

(Life had been very difficult ever since she realized their new height difference meant she could do that.)

“Barryyyyyyyy,” she whined.

“I have a _lot_ of overdue books,” he said, hefting his backpack.

“Paid,” she said. “All of them.”

He gave in. “Okay, okay, just because I don’t want Joe coming back to find you tied to the chimney or something.”

“Oh my god, they’d do it, too,” Iris said. She peeked through the basement door, gasped, and bolted down the stairs. “Jake! Get down from there!”

* * *

They slumped on the couch, staring blindly at the TV, which was playing the DVD menu for The Lion King on an endless loop. The kids were finally asleep, if the baby monitor was to be believed. Asleep or plotting their next diabolical scheme. Iris was too tired to care about the difference right now.

She should probably feel bad for roping Barry into helping, but if he hadn’t been here tonight, there probably would have been broken bones. Not all of them hers.

He leaned over and plucked at her hair. "What are you doing?” she asked curiously.

“You had macaroni in your hair,” he told her.

“Oh gross,” she mumbled, but without any real urgency. She was too tired, and macaroni was far from the most disgusting thing she’d had to deal with tonight. “My dad is so dead.”

“They’re leaving tomorrow,” he reminded her.

“Yaaaaaaaaaay.”

Barry mustered up the energy to shut the TV off. Blessed silence descended.

“I’m never, ever, ever having kids,” she vowed. “And if I do, I’m not having twins.”

“Amen, me neither,” Barry said, and they shook on it.

FINIS

**Author's Note:**

> Want more? Visit me at mosylufanfic.tumblr.com


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